Love Among the Ruins Part 38

"Reverence the sc.u.m of Gilderoy?"

"Ha, man, if we are well advised, these folk have been breathed upon by fanaticism. I tell you, I have seen a meanly-born crowd make a very stubborn day of it with some of the best troops that ever saw service.

Secondly, sire, I would say to you, turn off your mercenaries if the sky looks black; never trust your neck to paid men when any great peril threatens."

Flavian, out of his good sense, agreed with Tristram.

"Your words are weighty," he said. "So long as we are campaigning, I will pay them well and keep them. If it comes to a siege, I will have no hired bravos in Gambrevault. And now, gentlemen, it is late; get what sleep you may, for who knows what may come with the morrow. Modred and Geoffrey, I leave to you the visiting of the outposts to-night.

Order up my lutists and flute-players; I shall not sleep without a song."

He pa.s.sed alone to the outer battlements, and let the night expand about his soul, the stars touch his meditations. From the minstrels' gallery in the hall came the wail of viols, the voices of flute, dulcimer and ba.s.soon keeping a mellow under-chant. He heard the sea upon the rocks, saw it glimmering dimly to end in a fringe of foam.

So his thoughts soared to the face of one woman in the world, the golden Eve peering out of Paradise, whose soul seemed to ebb and flow like the moan of the distant music. He fell into deep forecastings of the future. He remembered her words to him, her mysterious warnings, her inexplicable inconsistencies, her appeal to war. Gilderoy had taught him much, and some measure of truth shone like a dawn spear in the east. A gulf of war and vengeance stretched from his feet. Yet he let his soul circle like a golden moth about the woman's beauty, while the wail of the viols stole out upon his ears.

XXIX

Little store of sleep had the Lord of Gambrevault that night. War with all its echoing prophecies played through his thought as a storm wind through the rotting cas.e.m.e.nts of a ruin. He beheld the high hills red with beacons, the valleys filled with the surging steel of battle.

Gilderoy and its terrors flamed through his brain. Above all, like the moon from a cloud shone the face of Yeoland, the Madonna of the Forest.

He was up and armed before dawn, and on the topmost battlements, eager for the day. The sun came with splendour out of the east, hurling a golden net over the woods piled upon the hills. Mists moved from off the sea, that s.h.i.+mmered opalescent towards the dawn. Brine laded the breeze. The waves were scalloped amber and purple, fringed with foam about the agate cliffs.

The hours were void to the man till riders should come in with tidings of how the revolt sped at Gilderoy and Geraint. The prophetic hints that had been tossed to him from the tongues of the mob had served to discover to him his own invidious fame. Gambrevault, on its rocky headland, stood, the strongest castle in the south, a black ma.s.s looming athwart the perilous path of war. The rebels would smite at it. Of that its lord was a.s.sured.

At noon he attended ma.s.s in the chapel, with all his knights, solacing his impatience with the purer aspirations of the soul. It was even as he left the chapel that Sir Modred met him, telling how a galloper had left the woods and was cantering over the meadows towards the headland.

The man was soon under the arch of the great gate, his sweating horse smiting fire from the stones, dropping foam from his black muzzle. The rider was G.o.damar, Flavian's favourite esquire, a ruddy youth, with the heart of a Jonathan.

Modred brought him to the banqueting-hall, where Flavian awaited him in full harness, two trumpeters at his back.

"Sire, Geraint has risen."

"Ha!"

"They are marching on Gambrevault."

"Your news, on with it."

G.o.damar told how the troop had neared Geraint at eve and camped in the wood over night. At dawn they had reconnoitred the town, and seen, to their credit, black columns of "foot" pouring out by all the gates. The Gambrevault company had fallen back upon the woods unseen, and had watched the Gerainters ma.s.sing in the city meadows about a red banner and one in armour upon a white horse. G.o.damar had lain low in a thicket and watched the rebels march by in the valley. They had pa.s.sed between two hundred paces of him, and he swore by Roland the Paladin that it was a woman who rode the great white horse.

Flavian had listened to the man with a golden flux of fancy that had divined something of the esquire's meaning.

"G.o.damar," he said.

"Sire?"

"You rode with me that day when we tracked a certain lady from Cambremont glade towards the pine forest."

"Sire, you forestall me in thought."

"So?"

"I could even swear upon my sword that it is Yeoland of Cambremont who rides with the Gerainters."

Flavian coloured and commended him. G.o.damar ran on.

"I threaded the thicket, sire, made a detour, galloped hard and rejoined our company. The Gerainters were blind as bats; they had never a scout to serve them. We kept under cover and watched their march. They came due west in three columns, one following the other. Six miles from Geraint, Longsword gave me a spare horse and sent me spurring to bring you the news."

Flavian stroked his chin and brooded.

"Their numbers?" he asked anon.

"Ten thousand men, sire, we guessed it such."

Before G.o.damar had ended his despatch, a second galloper came in breathless from Gilderoy. He had left Fulviac's rebels ma.s.sing in the meadows beyond the river, and had kept cover long enough to see the foremost column wheel westwards and take the road for Gambrevault. The scout numbered the Gilderoy force at anything between eight and twelve thousand pikes. Fulviac had been on the march three hours.

The Lord of Avalon stood forward in the oriel in the full light of the sun. Sea, hill, and woodland stretched before him under a peerless sky.

There was the scent of brine in the breeze, the banner of youth was ablaze upon the hills. A red heart beat under his s.h.i.+mmering cuira.s.s, red blood flushed his brain. It was a season of romance and of l.u.s.ty daring, an hour when his manhood shone bright as his burnished sword.

Thoughts were tumbling, moving over his mind like water over a wheel.

Geraint stood ten leagues from Gambrevault, Gilderoy thirteen. The Geraint forces had been on the march six hours or more, the men of Gilderoy only three. Hence, by all the craft of Araby, they of Geraint were three hours and three leagues to the fore. Bad generals.h.i.+p without doubt, but vastly prophetic to the man figuring in the oriel, his fingers drumming on the stone sill.

Strategy stirred in him, and waxed like a dragon created from some magic crystal into the might of deeds. The Lord of Gambrevault caught the strong smile of chivalry. A great venture burnt upon his sword. It was no uncertain voice that rang through the hall of Gambrevault.

"Gentlemen, to horse! Trumpets, blow the sally! Let every man who can ride, mount and follow me to-day. Blow, trumpets, blow!"

The brazen throats brayed from the walls, their shrill scream echoing and echoing amid the distant hills. Their message was like the plunging of a boulder into a pool, smiting to foam and clamour the camp in the meadows. Swords were girded on, spears plucked from the sods, horses saddled and bridled in grim haste. In one short, stirring hour Flavian rode out from Gambrevault with twelve hundred steel-clad riders at his back. Those on the walls watched this ma.s.s of fire and colour thundering over the meadows, splas.h.i.+ng through the ford, smoking away to the east with trumpets clanging, banneroles adance. There was to be great work done that day. The sentinels on the walls gossiped together, and swore by their lord as he had been the King.

Gambrevault and its towers sank back against the skyline, its banner waving heavily above the keep. Flavian's ma.s.s of knights and men-at-arms held over the eastern downs that rolled greenly above the black cliffs and the blue mosaics of the sea. A brisk breeze laughed in their faces, setting plumes nodding, banneroles and pensils aslant.

Their spears rose like the slim masts of many sloops in a harbour. The sun shone, the green woods beckoned to the glittering ma.s.s with its forest of rolling spears.

Flavian's pride whimpered as he rode in the van with Modred, G.o.damar, who bore the banner of Gambrevault, and Merlion d'Or, his herald. The man felt like a Zeus with a thunderbolt poised in his hand. A word, the flash of a sword, the cry of a trumpet, and all this splendid torrent of steel would leap and thunder to work his will. The star of chivalry shone bright in the heavens. As for this woman on the white horse, the Madonna of the Pine Forest, G.o.d and the saints, he would charge the whole world, h.e.l.l and its legions, to win so rich a prize.

Turning northwards, with scouts scattered in the far van, they drew to wilder regions where the dark and saturnine outposts of the great pine forest stood solemn upon the hills. Dusky were the thickets against the sapphire sky, the cloud banners trailing in the breeze. The very valleys breathed of battle and sudden peril of the sword. Rounding a wood, they saw riders flash over the brow of a hill and come towards them at a gallop. The men drew rein before the great company of spears.

Their leader saluted his lord, and glanced round grimly upon the sea of steel dwindling over the green slopes.

"Sire, we are well-fortuned."

"Say on."

"Ten thousand rebels from Geraint are on the march two miles away.

G.o.damar has given you the news. We are on the crest of the wave."

Flavian tightened his baldric.

"Good ground to the east, Longsword?"